19.3.2014

Deko the CRM is a distributed CRM - what is it distributed?

With Deko the CRM each businessman has his data with him stored in his notebook. In his office, on the road, connected to the Internet or disconnected. When businessman search for some information, he always searches his local database. When some customer calls him a note of the call is saved to businessman's computer. Internet connection is not needed. Internet connection slows down the action. Imagine the situation you need to connect to wifi on you business meeting. Will you interrupt the meeting and will you ask for access data for customer's wifi? How much time will you loss? Or, you are connected using mobile network but the connection is unbelievable slow: "Do not wonder, there is weak signal", is the customer's answer. Terrible situation!

That's the reason why every businessman has his own database copy.

Businessman very often go to long trips when they spend few weeks on the road and all their notes are saved to local copy of Deko database.

Each businessman has slightly different copy of the data in his computer. One businessman has information about his contacts in Upper Villager, the other businessman has information about his meetings in Lower Village. Even though the most of time the information are stored separately, the database is only one - stored in two different computers. The database is distributed - spread to several locations. No central location exists.

Sooner or later, the businessmen meet each other and they will synchronize their data, so there will be two identical databases.

The number of businessmen is not limited - the function is identical for two or for twenty businessmen.

In company Hobrasoft we have out internal database stored on few different places:

• In a server - various information from web are stored here and database is used also as a data source for some customer's information on our web pages. All Deko users in Hobrasoft synchronize their computer with this database.
• In my work computer - I work here most of time. I synchronize data few times in a day.
• In my notebook - I take the notebook to my trips, I synchronize data usually before and after the trip.
• In computer of my colleague. Ask him for the period of synchronization.
• In computer of our businessman, she synchronize data usually once in week.

In every computer are stored slightly different data. I never need information of my colleague's work just now - in most cases I check the data once in week before our meeting.

One database instance is installed in Linux server and we all synchronize out data only with this server. The server is no central place, but there are some other advantages:

• It is comfortable, the server is always available anywhere within the internet
• Settings of all computers are equal and does not change: local database in notebook and remote database in server
• Regular backups are made on server, data are in safe.
• Our web pages can retrieve some data from the database.